


The Princeling and the Common Mech

by alienboyfriend (MarriedHeathens)



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Ratchet being old, Starscream being Starscream, Starscream redemption, medics have special hands, rating to be decided, soft-sparked old medics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-17 16:01:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11854962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarriedHeathens/pseuds/alienboyfriend
Summary: Canon-divergent post-Partners. After leaving the Decepticons, Starscream finds himself facing a Seeker's worst enemy: loneliness. He takes what solace he can in roping the Autobots' medic into an affair, but it's not long before the soft-sparked buffoon starts to get to him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ratchstar and Starscream redemption arcs are a couple of my favorite things, so I thought I'd try my hand at one. This is based a lot on roleplays between myself and my partner, but with some of my own interpretations added in. c:
> 
> I can't promise updates will be regular, but I have a full doc of notes for them, so they are coming!
> 
> Fic title based on a song from the Anastasia musical.

[ **STARSCREAM** ] :: _I have information you might find valuable. Come alone. Bring medical kit._ ::

It was a familiar comm by now. The moment Ratchet saw Starscream’s tag, he knew it was coming. That didn’t stop the medic from letting out a long-suffering sigh, rolling his optics. The insufferable Seeker would just have to wait. Bulkhead was on patrol, Arcee and Bumblebee were investigating a Decepticon mine, and Optimus was attending to some business with their human liaison. There was no way the medic was going to _actually_ go out there alone, and if Starscream thought he **_was_ ** , then he was stupider than Ratchet had taken him for.

[ **STARSCREAM** ] :: _This is urgent, doctor._ ::

Primus, really? Ratchet gave a snort, digits tapping impatiently on the desk in front of him. He knew he shouldn’t grace the Decepticons’ former Second with a response -- Starscream was as duplicitous as they come, nothing he said could be trusted without copious evidence -- but old medic coding tugged at the ambulance’s spark.

Starscream might actually be in need right now, information or not. And even if he didn't care to admit it, Ratchet had always been too soft at spark for his own damned good. With an annoyed grunt, he shot back a response.

[ **RATCHET** ] :: _How urgent, Starscream?_ ::

[ **STARSCREAM** ] :: _Wings damaged. Leaking. Please come._ ::

Starscream’s response had been near-immediate -- and had a hint of desperation the others hadn't carried. Ratchet wondered for a moment if he’d been in the middle of sending it already. Ratchet cursed under his breath, glanced sidelong at the toolkit he kept by his desk at all times.

If what Starscream said was true, it could be of benefit to the Autobots to just leave him. A Seeker was no good grounded. Having one more enemy off the playing field brought it that much closer to being actually level.

At the same time, it was cruel to leave someone like that, especially a Seeker. Starscream could starve, or worse, without his alt mode’s help getting him from place to place. Just the thought of a mech, any mech, out there with their lines running dry, slowly dying in the wilds of an alien world so far from home…

[ **STARSCREAM** ] :: _Please._ ::

Frag it to the pit and back.

Ratchet pinged Optimus a note, letting him know he was out for a drive and what his coordinates would be, just in case, then punched them into the ground bridge and activated it. He grabbed up his medkit, squared his shoulders, and turned.

[ **RATCHET** ] :: _On my way._ ::

  


\---

  


The wind was harsh, blowing the dust and grit of the surrounding landscape into Starscream’s seams and open wounds. The Seeker had turned towards it, pressing his side to a cliff face to try and protect his wings, but could only pin one behind him because of the damage -- one of the vehicons had severed a cable in the fight, or busted a line. That would be his luck. Flying had only exacerbated the wounds and made things worse, but what other choice had he had? He’d had to get away.

The Seeker hissed as another gust hit him. He shuttered his optics, wrapped his arms tight around himself. For only the fiftieth time that day, he cursed Megatron, cursed the Decepticon cause, cursed _himself_ and his string of terrible luck.

 _Idiot_ . Starscream should have been keeping a low profile. Every Decepticon on this planet was gunning for him and he knew it, but he’d decided to test his luck anyways. Stupid, _stupid,_ **_stupid_ ** \--

The brilliant green of a groundbridge opening hit him, and the Seeker looked up, his one good wing flaring. The silhouette of the Autobot medic emerged, and behind him…

No one. Huh. Starscream had expected Bulkhead’s hulking form, at the very least.

The Seeker relaxed, visibly so, and the medic knelt by him, _tut-tutting_ at the state of him. Ratchet put his toolkit down, opening it up and setting to work. Starscream had to fight the urge to flinch away; his already sensitive wings were even more so now that they had hot pain searing through them, and every line of code he had shouted that this was the _enemy_. He shouldn’t be letting him touch something so important.

“You know, this is usually when you start demanding that information I promised, doctor.” Starscream’s voice was a low croon, the tone smooth, trying to distract himself from his processor’s flurry of thoughts. “I’ve always known your kind to ask questions _first_.”

That earned him a snort from the ambulance, a shake of Ratchet’s head. “You’re leaking too badly. Too much longer and you’d be too weak to tell me anything.”

Starscream gave a snort of his own, then a _hiss_ when Ratchet hit something particularly sensitive. He flinched back, but the medic was quick to shush him.

“Here, here.” Ratchet’s digits pressed to the hinge of his bad wing. Starscream felt a bit of a vibration, and then the spot numbed. Ratchet ran the servo along the rest of his wing, then the other, and Starscream sagged as the pain finally drained from him. He hadn’t realized just how tense he’d been.

“ _Proper_ medic’s servos,” Starscream purred with awe, turning just enough to raise an optic ridge at Ratchet. “It’s a wonder you’ve kept them working this long. They’re very delicate, aren’t they?”

“I _was_ called Iacon’s best doctor for a reason.” The statement is prideful, and vain, but Ratchet says it as matter-of-fact as if he was commenting on the color of Earth’s grass. “I take care of my equipment. My servos are just as important to my work as any of my other tools.”

Starscream eyed him for a moment -- as best he could from where they both sat -- then smirked, slowly, amusement coloring his EM. Ratchet shot him a glare, and Starscream held up a single servo.

“My apologies, doctor. You just reminded me of something.”

They were both silent for a few minutes more. Ratchet eventually motioned for Starscream to lie down on his front so he could get a better position over him, and Starscream obliged, though he hated that he could no longer see any of what was going on. Ratchet connected lines and cables back together, soldered them where they had severed. 

“What were you doing to get yourself in this state, anyways?” the medic finally grunted. Starscream blinked, helm tilting towards him even though he couldn’t see.

Starscream snorted, waving a servo. “What one _usually_ does if they want to be gravely injured, of course. Snooping around Decepticon operations I’d thought had been cleared.”

Ratchet raised an optic ridge. “You’d think you’d have learned your lesson by now, Starscream. This is starting to become a habit.”

Starscream’s mood went from almost amused to completely sour in one second flat, and he scowled, plating puffing out in indignation.

“You think I don’t **_know_ ** that?” he snapped with a snarl. He felt Ratchet pull back -- maybe he thought Starscream was going to reel around and claw him. “But what _else_ am I supposed to do? It’s not as if I have supplies of any kind, and you and yours certainly aren’t helping me find any! I have to _scavenge_ them, **_idiot_ ** .” A huff, then a growl. “And reward comes with a certain amount of… _risk_.”

“You’re going to get yourself **_killed_ ** , Starscream.” Ratchet responded to the Seeker’s aggression in kind. If he pulled a wing into place just a bit harder than he needed to, at least Starscream couldn’t feel it.

“All the more better for _you_ , then, isn’t it?” Starscream sneered. “I’m sure you Autobots would be more than happy to have me out of the picture. I know Arcee would be absolutely **_delighted_ **.”

The medic resigned with a sigh. His touch became surprisingly gentle, and Starscream jolted when he felt a servo rest on his shoulder.

“I’m not going to be able to patch up every little scrape and scratch you get. Please think about that before you go and do something reckless, next time.”

The Seeker’s brows furrowed; confusion trickled through him. Why did Ratchet even _care?_ They were _enemies_ and had been for millennia; their relations with each other were either violence or business. And Starscream had been right in saying they’d fare better if he weren’t there. They shared a common enemy, now, but that didn’t make them any more _allies_. They were still competing for the same resources.

Of course, Autobots were sentimental, not like the more calculating Decepticons. Starscream let out a long sigh, shuttering his optics.

“You Autobots are far too soft,” he muttered.

More silence. This time it stretched, uninterrupted, until Ratchet used his servos to put feeling back in Starscream’s wings and stood back up.

“There,” he said. “It’s not pretty -- just a field patch -- but it’ll hold until your self-repair nanites can take care of everything. You should be fully flight-capable within the next few hours, completely healed in the next week. _Take it easy_ until then, do you understand? You don’t want the welds coming off.”

Starscream nodded, pushing himself to his feet. He brushed the dirt from his front, slowly rolling his wings on their hinges to make sure they were operational. He winced at the slight soreness -- but it was better than them being mangled.

“It will suffice,” he said, raising his helm. All vulnerability was gone, replaced once more with haughtiness. “I have the coordinates of an energon cache your team could make use of, I’ll ping them to y--”

Ratchet held up a hand to interrupt him. “Keep them. You need it more than we do.”

Without another word, Ratchet turned, leaving through the groundbridge he’d come through and leaving Starscream stunned and silent.

He would never understand Autobots.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took a bit to get to you guys! I have a schedule I've been putting myself on to try and work out some of the kinks in my rampant executive dysfunction and be more productive on the whole, but we recently lost one of our pets, so I fell off the bandwagon for a little bit. I'm trying to get back on, now, so hopefully updates will be regular, or at least more frequent. <3

The re-discovery of the Harbinger had been Starscream’s salvation. The ship had everything one needed in a working base: computer systems, berths for sleeping, a roof to keep him sheltered. The only problem with it, its fatal flaw, was that a good number of Decepticons  _ knew where it was _ .

Other mechs would --  **_did_ ** \-- call him paranoid, but Starscream had only lived through what he had by being properly cautious. Maybe Megatron would come searching for him, or maybe the rusted heap of slag had stopped caring, but either way, Starscream couldn’t risk it. The moment Megatron laid optics on him, he was good as offlined.

So he’d found a different prospective site, a small cavern in the middle of a desert. After over a month of laboring, putting his old engineering degree to work, and using the ship’s on-board groundbridge to make his way back and forth, the Harbinger had been gutted and stripped. He’d cobbled together a generator to power his new base of operations, hooked his computers, energon filter, and tools to it. It was rudimentary, let in drafts, and the sand of the surrounding area caught in his joints and irritated his lines, not to mention the inconvenience of bridging back to the Harbinger to bridge anywhere else, but it was a small price to pay for security.

But after his little project was done, Starscream had nothing else to focus on.

First the boredom set in. Seekers were always susceptible to it; their processors were programmed for the intricacies of flight, something that required the processing of multitudes of stimuli simultaneously, and it was so easy for them to fall prey to understimulation. He put together half-baked plans of Megatron’s demise, of his usurping of the Decepticon throne, but every one of them was stupider than the last, and it only ended up with him breaking one of the only good datapads he had against a wall in his frustration with himself. He didn’t bother after that.

After that, it was the  **_loneliness_ ** . The Nemesis had been worse than the Pit, at times, but it had had the bustle of other mechs. He’d had someone to talk to -- if not Knockout, the Eradicon femme who’d been so polite to him, V-6689, or whatever her serial was.

Starscream was a social mech, whether he liked it or not. This was tantamount to torture.

He was getting it particularly bad that day. Starscream had gone for two flights and had attempted to watch one of those insipid organic entertainment vids from his computer terminal, but he still felt fidgety, restless. The flights had been lackluster; he’d been too bored by the vid to absorb a single bit of it. Primus, Megatron should have just killed him when he’d had the chance. Anything would be better than this gaping void of a life.

An idea struck him. He did have one mech’s comm, someone he  _ almost _ trusted not to kill him. If he got a hold of Ratchet, perhaps the old medibot would indulge him and give him some company.

No, no,  **_stupid_ ** . Primus, was he  **_trying_ ** to bring the whole group of Autobots down on top of him? They were soft, but at least one of them would slaughter him without hesitation. If he didn’t have something to offer them, he shouldn’t bother. And none of them, least of all Ratchet, would put up with frivolous dalliances. Still…

Starscream tapped his talons against the armor on his thighs, twitched his wings in agitation. He felt everything settling in his lines like an itch he couldn’t scratch.

Slag it.

[  **STARSCREAM** ] ::  _ Enclosed are my coordinates. Come alone. _ ::

The request was met with silence. Starscream waited a few minutes for Ratchet’s response, then huffed a sigh, wings drooping, as he closed his comm line. It’s as much as he should have expected. He shouldn’t have felt disappointed, but he couldn’t help the way his tank sunk in his abdomen.

Fine, then. This was the way, now, and he’d adapted to far worse conditions. Starscream straightened himself, squared his shoulders, lifted his wings and chin. The universe had dealt him this hand. He would play it if he had to.

Green light filled the cave.

Starscream jolted to his pedes at the sound of the groundbridge opening. His wings flared wide. And at the mouth of the cave, just a moment later, stood Ratchet, toolkit in hands.

He took one long look at Starscream before dropping his kit and rushing over.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” His hands were on Starscream’s shoulders, moving him to examine him. “What did you get yourself into? Are you  _ alright? _ Primus, Starscream, don’t  **_scare_ ** me like that--”

Starscream stood there in shock through the volley of questions. His optics blinked, mouth gaping before he finally managed to speak.

“Ratchet, Ratchet, I-- I’m  **_fine_ ** .”

Ratchet stopped short, hands still on Starscream’s shoulders. “Excuse me?”

“I said, I’m  **_fine_ ** .”

In an instant, all the concern in Ratchet’s features turned to anger.

“You’re fine? Are you  **_joking_ ** _? _ ” The ambulance huffed, optic ridge creasing in a glare as he stepped away. His crossed his arms over his chassis. “And you called me as, what, a prank? Do you have  **_any idea_ ** how much energon that groundbridge runs? And how  **_worried_ ** I was? Nothing but ‘come to my coordinates’, I can’t believe that you would--”

“Oh, doctor, you  **_do_ ** care.” Despite the mocking tone Starscream took, the hand he touched to his own chassis in fake shock, there was an almost gentle look in his optics. The fact that someone, especially an Autobot, had even  _ bothered _ to be worried about him was an alien idea to him. An alien emotion that he couldn’t quite figure out how to process.

“I had  _ hoped _ ,” Starscream continued, half-turning so that he could circle closer to Ratchet, “that we might spend some time together. If you weren’t busy.”

The medic kept a wary optic on Starscream, frowning deeply. “You called me here to...”

Starscream moved behind him. He placed his hands on the medic’s shoulder plates, talons barely scratching the paint on Ratchet’s chassis. Leaning in, he purred directly into his audial, his voice a growling croon, “If you’re so inclined,  _ doctor _ .”

Immediately, Ratchet whirled. He slapped Starscream’s hands away, and Starscream flared his wings and plating half in instinct. He could see the disdain in Ratchet’s optics, contempt like Megatron held for him, and fear and anger rose in his tanks and to his spark. Starscream hissed, backing away -- but Ratchet simply moved past him, back towards the ground bridge.

The rush of rage sank as quickly as it had come, settling to a sickening melancholy. Ratchet hadn’t killed him, but Starscream had succeeded in embarrassing himself thoroughly, which was almost worse. His wings dropped on their hinges, hanging limply at his back. He placed a hand to his face.

Then Ratchet walked back in, two energon cubes in hand. It wasn’t until then that the groundbridge flickered off.

“It might not be exactly what you’re asking for,” Ratchet said, offering out a cube, “but I’m willing to stay and talk. If you’d have me.”

“I don’t need your  **_pity_ ** ,” Starscream spat, only looking up to glare.

“And I don’t need  **_you_ ** conflating this with pity.” Ratchet motioned the cube he held, wordlessly asking Starscream to accept it.

Starscream stared down at the glowing blue energon, turning towards the medic to eye it better. “What kind?”

“High grade, from a stash I’ve been keeping. I’m sure you could use the pick-me-up.”

“High grade?” Starscream raised a brow, suddenly interested.

“Iaconian, Golden Age.”

“ _ Eugh _ , Iaconian.” Starscream took the cube and sipped it regardless. “Vosnian Jet Grade will  **_forever_ ** be superior, no matter what cycle it was made, but I suppose this will do for now. It’s better than half-refined scraps --  _ marginally _ . At least it can get me overcharged. No, no, sorry,  **_tipsy_ ** .”

Ratchet snorted. “ _ Excuse _ me? Iaconian was some of the best on the market--”

“Yes, if you had no  _ taste _ .” There’s some humor, there, a hint of a smile. “But I do suppose you grounders couldn’t handle good Jet Grade if your sparks depended on it, so… You’re excused.”

That earned a laugh from the medic, and the two of them settled down for the next few hours, chatting over their cubes. By the end of the night, Starscream’s wings fluttered high, and he had the haughty, amused smile of a true Vosnian noble.

Ratchet, for the life of him, couldn’t think of anything more charming.


End file.
